For me, around 1991 I was working in a hotel in a tiny blip of a village in East Anglia where two-thirds of the homes were second bless-tihs-hosues owned by affluent Londoners as weekend retreats... after a day in the kitchen, the only recreations open to staff were sex and drinking, both of which pale after a while.

Luckily, I discovered one of the tourist tat shops had a bookshelf, and while 90% was instantly forgettable, there was a copy of something called Wyrd Sisters by Tery Pratchett available.. that was it. Bought it, read it, got hooked, begged bookseller man to order all five previous books for me.

And i've never looked back...

Used to be too clever by half, but by virtue of consistent drinking, now only too clever by about a quarter. Banned from all BBC messageboards for being too much of an "uncceptable editorial risk".

Stumbled into Pratchett quite by accident i'm afraid to admit.
Was in my local Tesco one day and saw a hard back book called Masqerade reduced to £1.99.
Never one to pass by a bargain i splashed the cash and became hooked.
I've strayed from the path and not read them in any order unfortunately and some books make me smile, whilst others have me laughing out loud.

Should i confess to not appreciating Rincewind ???

I like to think i have qualities and the integrity of Corporal Carrot, but in the cold light of day i am more like CMOTD.

Quite how I came to the Discworld is lost in the mists of time.
I suppose it must have been on exersize somewhere out in what seemed like Überwald hiding from orange force.
I do remember though the first sojourne was into Reaper Man and from then on I was , as the rest here it would seem, well and truely HOOKED.

Like many here abouts I have my favourites and the not so. Some merely make me smile others have had me in tears of laughter.
I like the exploits of the City Watch and I've seen many of the traits of the characters in former colleagues, . . . and I have to admit sometimes in me too

I have to admit to taking an overly long time to warm up to the witches, but headology finaly got the better of me.
I find I'm now having trouble warming up to young Tiffany, but I suppose I'll get there. Took to the wee free men like a duck to water.

At the moment I'm eagerly looking forward to the release of Snuff . . . can hardly wait.

The first Pratchett book I ever read was actually Nation. I think W H Smith did a deal on it when it came out a few years ago. I liked it and bought a couple of Discworld novels which unfortunately lived unread somewhere under my bed for quite a while, while I was waylaid by other (also very good) writings. Finally dug out Guards! Guards! earlier this year and went from there. Haven't read any books by anyone other than Pratchett since.

I'm still fairly new to the whole thing I have to admit, but I'd have to say that like everyone else here, I'm hooked.

Also: In a way, Terry Pratchett's books helped me out of quite a nasty slump not too long ago. When I felt I couldn't bring myself to get up, let alone do anything, I would pick up one of his books and within a few pages I'd have a smile on my face. This also led to me finding this place. Lovely!

Bouncy Castle wrote:Time and time again, I read on various forums, or speak to people who say that Discworld helped them through depression.

Should be on the NHS.

I was one of those people who thought they'd never give in to depression and to be honest I don't even really know if that's what it was (I didn't seek medical help). And it wasn't a lengthy thing at all, I had bad days and awful days like the ones mentioned above for a couple of weeks or so and I don't really know where it came from, but I snapped out of it pretty quickly. I'm fairly ignorant when it comes to things like depression, so like I said, I don't really know if depression is how you would describe it or not.

Anyways, reading a few pages of a book was just something that I felt I could manage to do even on the crappiest of days, so I did it as often as possible. It just so happened those pages were written by Terry Pratchett and so of course helped me to cheer up and feel a bit better about things.

Bought colour of magic when I saw it in the local bookshop, cover looked like nothing I'd seen before so caught my eye. Think I might have got Light Fantastic at the same time, although long time ago now! but was definately still at school...